


Everyone Else's Girl

by Socket



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Joyce's POV, With hints of Joyce/Giles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 00:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7198376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Socket/pseuds/Socket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has been a daughter, a sister, a girlfriend, a wife, a mother. Always someone else’s. Always in relation to another person’s needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everyone Else's Girl

**Disclaimer:** Joss Whedon and 20th Century Fox own everything Buffy. Tori Amos owns the title (lyric from the song ‘Girl’).  
**Timeline:** Gingerbread

She has been a daughter, a sister, a girlfriend, a wife, a mother. Always someone else’s. Always in relation to another person’s needs. 

She’s never had time to think about it before, always had something to do, someone to pick-up after. 

But now, now she has the time because they’ve all left her, in their own way. 

She’s not sure but she thinks she’s finding her voice again… perhaps for the first time. She’s learning to say ‘no’, learning to express anger. She’s good at bottling things up, so good at denial. But years of silence have taken their toll and she’s tired of being weak, tired of being used and discarded. 

Maybe that’s why… why she was so willing to loose herself in him. She had to loose herself to reclaim herself and no matter how many brownies she bakes and how many times she joins Buffy on patrol she can’t erase the taste of him from her mouth, the feel of his hands on her skin. She’s trying to atone but sometimes she hates this… the pretence of penitence, knows she doesn’t regret their tryst. Knows it was the best mistake she’s made in years - her mistake, her choice, her decision. Hers. 

But she’s an expert in guilt. Can’t break the habit. Can’t break the barrier growing between her and Giles - and maybe it’s for the best. She doesn’t want another man that she’ll put before everything else. She’s trying to learn how to be self-sufficient, how to survive. 

Sometimes, in her darker moments, it feels like the world has stopped. Her fear is great and she thinks that’s why everyone else owns her. Her fear allows her to give up, give in… sometimes gladly, sometimes resentfully… and it’s lying in wait, under everything she does. 

But it’s a fear of the known: of what can be, what has gone before and she thinks maybe she’s punishing herself because Buffy’s life is so hard. She’s trying to compensate, after all, she’s the one who brought her daughter to this. To the life of a Slayer, to Sunnydale - a place of carnage - and it’s something she can’t take back no matter how much she tries. It’s out of her control - she needs to accept this. 

Recently, everything feels chaotic and she’s always had cues up till now but she's been abandoned in a sea of demons and PTA meetings and she’s sure she should be doing things differently. Better. Buffy is responsible for the world and she needs to take responsibility for that which she can control; herself. She was never her own and it will take some getting used to but now, now she thinks she can be.


End file.
